Happiness and empathy will be for sale in the future…
Technology is bringing radical changes to our daily lives. Life in the 21st century is incomparable from that in the late 20th century.
I still remember rotary phones from my childhood during the 90s. I used to play with the wheel and liked the clicking sound when dialing numbers. My brother and I would talk in undertones with our friends, because the phone was in the common room and we could not move it elsewhere.
Today, we have smartphones that allow us to dial by voice command. We do not even have to touch the phones anymore. Instead, it is today is for much more than just making calls. We control our lives through our phones — from our financial transactions, to entertainment, to hobbies, to meetings. We do it all on our phones.
The impact of technology on our lives will only continue to grow. We are likely to see developments that will change the meaning of happiness and will redefine it completely for us.
The first attempt of development has always been to solve our everyday problems to make our lives easier, and current technological changes are in this direction.
The benefits of technology we see today are-
Faster completion of jobs, for example, through improvements in manufacturing, supply chain and logistic systems.
Data collection and analysis from all aspects of human life to allow people to make wise decisions.
By introducing machines and processes which do not have an unintended negative impact on the climate.
Predictable performance of any type of machinery and equipment to keep functions and processes running to infinity.
By creating the simulated environment using Virtual Reality.
Many industries have introduced automated systems that could impact our lives or have the likelihood of doing so in next 5 years.
In simple words, automation means that it has equipped mechanical devices with a sensor that detects all types of movement and activates machinery for the next steps based on the inputs.
But we have done nothing to alter human emotions. Emotions and minds have been vulnerable or guarded for centuries. No publicly available technology has ever penetrated this aspect of human behavior. But that also means it can happen in the future. In fact, this development will soon change our lives forever, altering the meaning of life, birth, and happiness.
Technology That Will Redefine the Meaning of Happiness
Leaving aside the above developments, can we say — what makes us happy?
I know the answer, “It depends.”
It is very subjective. Truth to be told, people are not happy all the time.
While money is necessary, it cannot provide us with happiness forever.
Since there are only 2095 billionaires in the world, having less money isn’t a problem for many people. Only billionaires are not happy in the world, and I doubt if their enormous money is really making them happy.
Basically, happiness has nothing to do with money. If it did, we would still fight with others like we, homo sapiens, did in our early years of evolution, when we started our life as hunters.
Happiness is something that gives you thrill and excitement, in balance with stability.
Food, good health, a home and now access to the internet provides that stability in life. But what about thrills and excitement?
One of the two cannot complete a man’s life. We need both, and we need it all.
That is why, even while leading a good life, which means a stable life, we are not happy.
To understand this excitement better, imagine the last time you were at your happiest?
Maybe when you got your dream job, when your article got 10000 views for the first time, or when your baby was born. It’s those special moments that make you happy. Those moments of five minutes or even a few hours are the special moments that define happiness for you.
And you don’t need such thrill and intense moments for all your life, but you need it from time to time to counter the monotonous life.
That’s where this technology comes in. It will let you experience those special moments of happiness. In fact, it will create such moments as per your wish.
Yes, I believe the time is not far when we can have a temporary chip or a sensor attached to our brain that will allow to have the same feeling as that of other people at different place.
It is like you can feel the adrenaline rush that Messi would feel while scoring a goal.
You could feel yourself landing on Mars like an astronaut.
You too could feel what Brad Pitt would have felt with Angelina Jolie.
It can happen when we could record such emotions of people in their critical moments. Like a chip would be available which has emotions of Messi — hitting a goal — recorded in it, and whoever uses it would feel the same emotion as he did at that time.
If I am not crazy enough, this could be the future ahead of us. We will buy such electronic chips in the market —
“Feel a Night with Mia Khalifa”
“Have dinner with the President or Prime Minister”
“Feel as if you have won a Gold in marathon.”
I know this is too overwhelming, but to think of internet for our great-grandparents would have been the same?
And I get goosebumps writing about it and thinking about the enormous possibilities it can bring to humanity.
How Can It Instill Empathy?
Imagine feeling the same pressure that your child feels while fulfilling your expectation of getting a good grade or winning that quiz competition.
Think about the feeling of a beggar who is finally receiving food after days of hunger.
Imagine feeling the pain of a blind person who can not see.
Or imagine if you let a terrorist feel what that last person would have felt when he killed him?
We can not comprehensively imagine the outcomes of when we let people live the pain of others as if it is theirs.
As I write this, I am more and more convinced that someday this technology would find its place in the world.
Not only would this technology create happy moments, but it would also instill empathy in people who do not see life beyond profits and money.
Emotional technology if used sensibly can introduce many such life-changing advancements that would change our lives for the better.
If you ever have such predictive thoughts or have written about them, share it with me in the comments.
I have published this article on my Medium profile as well.